Footnote

SIX months after September 11, many New Yorkers are still suffering from the effects of post-traumatic stress, but at least they live in the world capital of psychiatry.

What of the poor Afghans, though? According to yesterday's Los Angeles Times, their country has only about two dozen psychiatrists for its entire population of 25 million, and no psychologists, social workers or counsellors at all.

Lucky them, you may be thinking; but it appears that the war against America has made many of them very depressed. And in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif (population: 200,000), they depend for treatment almost entirely on one man, Dr Nader Alemi, the director of mental health at the city's general hospital.

In an interview with the LA Times, Dr Alemi explained the sensitivity that his work required. To a woman who asked him if she should sacrifice another goat instead of taking anti-depressants, he replied: "No, no. Allah has given these pills great power. It's like swallowing a little piece of God."

With the Taliban, of whom he had treated more than 1,000, he was especially careful, always attributing their ailments to "nervous problems" rather than mental or emotional ones. "These men were warriors," he said. "They couldn't be marked as mad."

But Dr Alemi found the Taliban very depressed. He treated two senior commanders, of whom one was hearing voices and the other was longing to die. Most Taliban soldiers were sick of war and wanted to go home, except for a few of their leaders, who, he said, were "really quite ill".

"I don't think the Taliban needed more guns, but more Prozac," he concluded.